• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

***THE OFFICIAL GTX480/470 END USER REVIEW THREAD***

Hi everyone!
I went for a short calculation of energy cost (in euros) of a 480GTX SLI, basing on 5cts€/hour at load for a 480GTX (600W) and comparing to a 5970 (according to ***** power consumption chart).
If I consider 24 hours of load per week and 72 hours of idle, it would cost me something like £140 for a 480 SLI. In similar conditions, A 5970 would cost something like £80.
My concern for my own use is, isn't a single GTX 480 a bit short for a 1920x1200 setup with full details to run ALL 2010 games smoothly at 60fps? Given the extra power of a 5970HD, this card might have what it takes to reach the top notch of framerate in most of conditions for the next 2 years (the period of time for which I usually keep a GC), whereas I might need a bit more than a GTX 480 to be fully satisfied?
And then a GTX 480 crossfire seems to be like a bad idea in terms of consumption and temps inside of the case!!!
Any opinion about that? My current setting is a 4870 512MB Xfire.
Thanks :)
 
superloutre said:
Hi everyone!
I went for a short calculation of energy cost (in euros) of a 480GTX SLI, basing on 5cts€/hour at load for a 480GTX (600W) and comparing to a 5970 (according to ***** power consumption chart).
If I consider 24 hours of load per week and 72 hours of idle, it would cost me something like £140 for a 480 SLI. In similar conditions, A 5970 would cost something like £80.
My concern for my own use is, isn't a single GTX 480 a bit short for a 1920x1200 setup with full details to run ALL 2010 games smoothly at 60fps? Given the extra power of a 5970HD, this card might have what it takes to reach the top notch of framerate in most of conditions for the next 2 years (the period of time for which I usually keep a GC), whereas I might need a bit more than a GTX 480 to be fully satisfied?
And then a GTX 480 crossfire seems to be like a bad idea in terms of consumption and temps inside of the case!!!
Any opinion about that? My current setting is a 4870 512MB Xfire.
Thanks :)
Click to expand...

There's no simple answer to your question. I have one 480 and am pretty happy with it. I very much doubt that there will be a game during 2010 that will tax a single 480 that won't tax a 5970 it isn't THAT much faster with current games and in fact is slower with one or two. It is likely (imo) but obviously not certain that there will be games towards the end of this year which use tesselation. If there are then the 5970 is likely to fall behind the 480 in FPS with these games.

One thing I can say is that if the 5970 goes below 60fps then you will probably experience microstutter which is something you don't get with a single GPU. Not everyone seems to notice it but I have stayed away from crossfire and SLi setups because of it. Obviously you have a crossfire setup yourself and microstutter may not bother you.

I bought a 480 because I like PhysX without the hassle of hacking it on and patching the hack on top of everything else. PhysX was a major factor in my choice. It is the single fastest current GPU. I find Nvidia driver support a little better than ATI. It is faster at Tesselation (which currently isn't important). It has some nice heatpipes sticking out :) Ok.. I'm not actually bothered about the heatpipes!

Finally.. You could just wait it out a bit longer. A crossfire 4870 setup is pretty fast. ATI will be releasing new cards in a few months and Nvidia may, just may make the 512 shader unit version appear towards the end of this year.
 
DragonRR said:
There's no simple answer to your question. I have one 480 and am pretty happy with it. I very much doubt that there will be a game during 2010 that will tax a single 480 that won't tax a 5970 it isn't THAT much faster with current games and in fact is slower with one or two. It is likely (imo) but obviously not certain that there will be games towards the end of this year which use tesselation. If there are then the 5970 is likely to fall behind the 480 in FPS with these games.

One thing I can say is that if the 5970 goes below 60fps then you will probably experience microstutter which is something you don't get with a single GPU. Not everyone seems to notice it but I have stayed away from crossfire and SLi setups because of it. Obviously you have a crossfire setup yourself and microstutter may not bother you.

I bought a 480 because I like PhysX without the hassle of hacking it on and patching the hack on top of everything else. PhysX was a major factor in my choice. It is the single fastest current GPU. I find Nvidia driver support a little better than ATI. It is faster at Tesselation (which currently isn't important). It has some nice heatpipes sticking out :) Ok.. I'm not actually bothered about the heatpipes!

Finally.. You could just wait it out a bit longer. A crossfire 4870 setup is pretty fast. ATI will be releasing new cards in a few months and Nvidia may, just may make the 512 shader unit version appear towards the end of this year.
Click to expand...

Hi DragonRR,
Interesting arguments... Is there a tool to "test" the micro stuttering?
Do all games use Pyhsix, and when I use an ATI I still have physix drivers installing so what are they used for?
Thanks :-)
 
soundood said:
i rest my case, Mythbusters Temps will rise in direct relation to ambient temps........... busted

:p

the temps will rise so far (not much) and then Plateau.
Click to expand...


Not true I'm afraid. The GPU temps will increase as the temperature goes up.

I'm not sure why things get hotter, as things get hotter :p Never been able to work that one out :D
 
Physx is on it's way out, just look at what has been released so far and it truly looks pitiful, now look forward to what's coming out that supports it then you will see it's dying a slow death.

5970 is way better than the 480, it's the simple truth.
 
Last edited:
superloutre said:
Hi DragonRR,
Interesting arguments... Is there a tool to "test" the micro stuttering?
Click to expand...

Yup, it's called the human eye. Microstutter's one of those things you can't fail to spot if it occurs.

I had 260 SLI for over a year, now I'm on 5870 Crossfire, I have never seen or experienced microstutter on any game, in any circumstance, ever. It's a thing of the past that a lot of people can't let go of, for whatever reason. Maybe they had some genuinely traumatic stutter in the bad old days of multiGPU, maybe they need to convince themselves that they're getting the better end-user experience, maybe it's just a convenient fanboy FUD point, who can say.

It's getting really annoying to see it trotted out again and again, as if it were a live issue, by people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Folks should speak only of their recent relevant experiences on the matter or STFU.
 
Well people who want to know how the cards perform come on the feedback forum, I don't think there is an ethical problem with that.
Anyway, I found the discussions useful and it definitely prove that there is no easy conclusion, both solutions have their pros and cons!
Now time to make a decision, cheers!
 
Rapido! said:
Yup, it's called the human eye. Microstutter's one of those things you can't fail to spot if it occurs.

I had 260 SLI for over a year, now I'm on 5870 Crossfire, I have never seen or experienced microstutter on any game, in any circumstance, ever. It's a thing of the past that a lot of people can't let go of, for whatever reason. Maybe they had some genuinely traumatic stutter in the bad old days of multiGPU, maybe they need to convince themselves that they're getting the better end-user experience, maybe it's just a convenient fanboy FUD point, who can say.

It's getting really annoying to see it trotted out again and again, as if it were a live issue, by people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Folks should speak only of their recent relevant experiences on the matter or STFU.
Click to expand...

Whilst I am prepared to accept that microstutter has been eradicated with the latest cards (e.g. 5970) I have seen it (most recently) with a 4870x2. I cannot state that you get microstuttering with your system because I haven't seen a system with 2x260s or 2x5870s but the reasons behind microstutter suggest that if the framerate drops below approx 60fps you are likely to experience microstutter from time to time. Even in the days of 7800 SLI setups (yes I had one) (where microstuttering was pretty severe) people said they didn't get it and that it doesn't exist, a myth.

If microstuttering has gone in the latest generation of cards then thats great news. However for the time being I'm quite sceptical and am fully entitled to voice that opinion even if some people don't like to hear it. I should point out that 2x5870s would give massive FPS with most games, as such I wouldn't expect to "see" microstuttering in the vast majority of current games in any case.

Further info:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1317582

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17896754
 
I have seen reviews on micro stuttering and the overall opinion is that in most cases its all but gone but as soon as the frames begin to get low it appears again. The thing is, the frames would need to get that low that on a single gpu the game would be unplayable in the first place.
 
This won't mean much - but SLI diagnostic mode from something I'm working on - with fps artificially capped to 60:

http://aten-hosted.com/images/sligraph.jpg

If there was human noticeable microstutter the slopes on the graph would not be a smooth linear progression instead they would exhibit uneven progression. In general in SLI atleast there is no noticeable microstutter in most cases.
 
anyone had any driver problems at all? i'm pretty impressed with the 1st release 197.41's, absolutely zero issues so far including 3D, well apart from the l4d2 shaders one that was a valve game problem and got patched
 
197.xx seem to be a welcome return to form for nVidia... ironically it seems to have been a reaction to the GPU melting driver causing some ripples inside nVidia so hopefully its not just a short term thing.
 
re:

Finally received my GTX480 today :)

I have already installed it and have updated the drivers:)

In all honestly the card is not loud at all in normal use, In preparation I had already installed two 120mm fans in the base of my case as I got to thinking the heatsink on this card has such a massive surface area that fans could cool it very well;)
On idle as I type the GPU is at 41c and its been installed for around an hour.
I have played Battlefield Bad company 2 with everything on high and the temp did rise to 69c

I find this very low:confused: actually cooler than my 260:confused:

I think my cheap fan solution is working well for me:)

The only thing I am not sure about is the temp system I am using to check is just OCCT, can anyone recommend a better free temp program I could try?

cheers
mrix
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom